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Microsoft has released new security updates for older versions of Windows as it warns of potential cyber-attacks by government organisations.

The patches include updates to Windows XP, the operating system that was targeted by the WannaCry ransomware attack in May that attacked parts of the NHS and other companies worldwide.

Typically, Microsoft only issues updates for its operating systems that are still supported – for consumers, that means Windows 7 and newer (with the exception of Windows 8, which is meant to be covered by the free upgrade to Windows 8.1). But in the wake of the WannaCry outbreak, which saw a ransomeware worm take advantage of un-patched versions of windows to encrpyt millions of computers worldwide, Microsoft is reassessing that policy.

“Due to the elevated risk for destructive cyber-attacks at this time, we made the decision to take this action because applying these updates provides further protection against potential attacks with characteristics similar to WannaCrypt [alternative name to WannaCry],” Adrienne Hall, the head of Microsoft’s Cyber Defense Operations Center, said.

Although Microsoft has not said what characteristics of the new vulnerabilities have led it to believe there is the potential for state-sanctioned attackers, the WannaCry reference has led security experts to conclude that the company is referring to leaked NSA hacking tools, released online by an entity calling itself The Shadow Brokers. The Shadow Brokers were responsible for releasing the vulnerability, referred to by the NSA as EternalBlue, which led to WannaCry being able to replicate itself and do so much damage internationally.

WannaCry wasn’t the only malware that used EternalBlue to spread, but it was by far the most destructive. The Shadow Brokers have promised to release further vulnerabilities in the future, offering them to “subscribers” willing to pay $10,000 (£7,850) a month for the privilege.

The new patches fix 16 vulnerabilities, of which 15 are ranked by Microsoft as critical. Craig Young, security researcher at infosec firm Tripwire, said: “Anyone still using Windows 2003 or XP should install these patches ASAP with the expectation that they will be actively exploited in the near term. This move may indicate that Microsoft has been made aware of exploits that may be pending imminent release from the Shadow Brokers.

“WannaCry was orders of magnitude smaller than some successful malware campaigns of the past,” Young added. “We may not be so lucky the next time this happens.”

But some criticised the move, arguing that continuing to support older versions of Windows was just delaying the inevitable. Peter Bright, from technology site Ars Technica, said: “patching is the wrong decision: it sends a clear message to recalcitrant corporations that they can stick with Windows XP, insecure as it is, because if anything too serious is found, Microsoft will update it anyway … Every time an organisation resists upgrading to Microsoft’s latest operating system, it jeopardises its own security.”

The WannaCry outbreak led to criticisms of the NHS for the widespread use of outdated software across the health service. Windows XP was not affected by the malware (although the operating system is weak to the EternalBlue exploit, WannaCry itself persistently crashed before managing to encrypt drives), but a number of the affected systems were running Windows Vista, a slightly newer unsupported version of the operating system.

DDN sells IME as software-only or on an appliance. DDN also improved the software to enable a cluster to non-disruptively handle a node failure and redistribute journaled data to the remaining nodes, and boost metadata and flash performance. IME added support for customer-configurable erasure code options, offering protection against the failure of one, two or three drives or nodes.

The DDN IME software has server and client components and deploys in front of a file system or parallel file system. The IME client intercepts I/O fragments, applies erasure coding, and then delivers the fragments to IME servers. The DDN IME servers manage the flash drive pool and internal metadata and arrange the I/O for optimal performance before synchronizing the data with the backend file storage.

DDN IME enables faster rebuilds

DDN claims the IME improvements would enable customers to rebuild 1 TB of data in less than four minutes, in comparison to peak rebuild times of about 2.5 hours with hard disk drives under RAID.

Laura Shepard, senior director of product marketing at DDN, said the IME enhancements would help customers who are increasing the amount of storage they deploy for analytics and machine learning applications.

DDN IME 1.1 is due for general release in the third quarter.

“We’re working on availability at scale with erasure coding everywhere across the product line,” Shepard said. “Erasure coding is the data protection of choice on IME and also on our [WOS] object storage, and now we’re also adding it for our persistent file system tier on our SFA product line.”

Shepard said declustered RAID would enable the software-based sharding of parity data bits across a large pool of drives in comparison to a small high availability pool in traditional RAID. DDN will start with support for the equivalent of RAID 1, 5, and 6 and release more options later, she said.

“You can have a much lower percentage of your overall capacity dedicated to parity and still have a very high level of data protection,” Shepard said of declustered RAID. “Plus, because parity can be distributed widely among a much larger number of drives than in a traditional RAID [configuration], you can rebuild much smaller bits from each drive, making the rebuilds much faster.”

Shepard said DDN uses a technique called vertical rotation with its declustered RAID to mitigate latency. She said the system offsets writes from one drive to the next so the drive’s on-board cache is not overwhelmed.

“The adaptive resilience features really help the end user tailor how performant they want their storage to be versus how much redundancy they want built in,” said Addison Snell, CEO of Intersect360 Research in Sunnyvale, Calif. “That’s just a slider bar that people can tune on their own.”

DDN steps up Lustre support

DDN also spotlighted its ExaScaler Enterprise Lustre Distribution and its work in the open source Lustre community in the wake of Intel’s April announcement that it would discontinue its commercially supported Lustre distribution.

“They’re really helping provide a landing space for the stewardship of high-performance Lustre for enterprise in a supported way,” Snell said. He said Intel offered the most significant commercially supported Lustre option, and DDN would provide “a safe haven” for high-performance-computing users that “want an actual enterprise that’s backing and providing support and contributing back to the open source community.”

HIGHLIGHTS

Update brings over 500 professionally drawn shapes

All three apps get auto-correction and text replacement

Some app-specific features have been added as well

Apple on Tuesday updated its iWork suite of apps that include Pages, Numbers, and Keynotes across macOS and iOS. The update adds a new library of over 500 professionally drawn shapes to all apps on both platforms along with some other new features and additions tailored for each OS.

The professionally drawn shapes can be found within categories like Objects, Education, Places, Activities, Animals, Nature, Food, Symbols, Transportation, Arts, People, and Work and across all the three iWork apps. The new categories can now be found with previously existing shapes and can be accessed by tapping on the plus icon in the navigation menu and selecting the shapes sub-category.

On macOS, apart from the new shapes, the new features common across all three iWork apps include the ability to reply to comments and join threaded conversations; new auto-correction and text replacement options; and Stock and Currency functions, which now returns data from the previous market day’s close. There’s also support for Hebrew and Arabic within Pages and Keynote.

The update to Keynotes on Mac will also bring new pan and zoom options, and you can now edit presenter notes while displaying slides in Light Table view. In Pages for Mac, iPhone and iPad, you can now add linked text boxes, export documents as fixed layout ePub books and change margins, headers, footers and paper size while collaborating. Numbers gets support for print preview.

On iOS, new common features across the three apps include the ability to reply to comments and join threaded conversations, and new auto-correction and text replacement options. The most notable additions include view options for Keynote and Pages. In Keynote for iOS, you will now be able to rearrange your slides with the new Light Table view, which will let you view all your slides on a grid. A similar feature can also be found in Pages, giving you a thumbnail view of each page of a document for easier navigation.

You can download the latest versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote for iOS and Mac from the App Store.

HIGHLIGHTS

Update brings over 500 professionally drawn shapes

All three apps get auto-correction and text replacement

Some app-specific features have been added as well

Apple on Tuesday updated its iWork suite of apps that include Pages, Numbers, and Keynotes across macOS and iOS. The update adds a new library of over 500 professionally drawn shapes to all apps on both platforms along with some other new features and additions tailored for each OS.

The professionally drawn shapes can be found within categories like Objects, Education, Places, Activities, Animals, Nature, Food, Symbols, Transportation, Arts, People, and Work and across all the three iWork apps. The new categories can now be found with previously existing shapes and can be accessed by tapping on the plus icon in the navigation menu and selecting the shapes sub-category.

On macOS, apart from the new shapes, the new features common across all three iWork apps include the ability to reply to comments and join threaded conversations; new auto-correction and text replacement options; and Stock and Currency functions, which now returns data from the previous market day’s close. There’s also support for Hebrew and Arabic within Pages and Keynote.

The update to Keynotes on Mac will also bring new pan and zoom options, and you can now edit presenter notes while displaying slides in Light Table view. In Pages for Mac, iPhone and iPad, you can now add linked text boxes, export documents as fixed layout ePub books and change margins, headers, footers and paper size while collaborating. Numbers gets support for print preview.

On iOS, new common features across the three apps include the ability to reply to comments and join threaded conversations, and new auto-correction and text replacement options. The most notable additions include view options for Keynote and Pages. In Keynote for iOS, you will now be able to rearrange your slides with the new Light Table view, which will let you view all your slides on a grid. A similar feature can also be found in Pages, giving you a thumbnail view of each page of a document for easier navigation.

You can download the latest versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote for iOS and Mac from the App Store.